I came across this publication:
"A comparison of six languages for system level
description of telecom applications"
Jantsch, Kumar, Sander et al.
http://www.imit.kth.se/~axel/papers/2000/comparison.pdf
I didn't see that under erlang.se/publications/
Was this paper known to others on this list?
"Abstract: Based on a systematic evaluation method with a large number
of criteria
we compare six languages with respect to the suitability as a system
specification and
description language for telecom applications. The languages under
evaluation are
VHDL, C++, SDL, Haskell, Erlang, and ProGram. The evaluation method
allows to
give specific emphasis on particular aspects in a controlled way, which
we use to
make separate comparisons for pure software systems, pure hardware
systems and
mixed HW/SW systems."
To cut to the chase, Erlang stands up well. C++ fares
"surprisingly" poorly as a specification language, and
the whole thing is distilled into the following little
table:
Context suitable languages
---------------- -------------------------
Control software Erlang, VHDL, SDL
mixed HW/SW Erlang, Haskell, VHDL, SDL
pure functional C++, Haskell, VHDL
pure HW Haskell, VHDL, SDL
simple HW Erlang, VHDL
Unsurprisingly, Erlang gets poor marks on data
modeling, typing, timing modeling and structural
details, but is deemed a good modeling language
esp. for complex control software.
BR,
Ulf W